SHARON, Pa. – It has been a long road to recovery for a once closed hospital in the city.
Now known as Sharon Regional Health System and operated by the nonprofit Tenor Health Foundation, the hospital is still working to rebound from Steward Health Care System’s bankruptcy, which caused its closure in early January.
It reopened in mid-March and as of late July, Radha Savitala, founder and CEO of Tenor Health Foundation, says the emergency department, behavioral health services, surgical services, telemetry unit, ICU, cardiology services, diagnostic services, vascular services, general orthopedic services, lab services, hospital-based clinics and outpatient pulmonology are all available now to patients in the Shenango Valley.
However, the heart catheterization lab, which would allow the hospital to resume its status as a top heart hospital in the area, still awaits a visit from the Pennsylvania Department of Health before it can fully reopen.
“We strongly believe our volumes will go up once we’re able to keep those cardiac patients here, because right now, we are transferring them out for higher level of care,” Savitala says.
She adds having the heart cath lab available in Sharon will mean less inconvenience for patients and families seeking “much needed life-saving services.”
Casey Fatch, CEO of the hospital, said hospital leaders are reviewing the data to determine what services people leave the area to get.
“Then we make an assessment – do we have the medical staff that have privileges that can provide those services here,” Fatch says.
For instance, Fatch says cancer radiation therapy, chemotherapy and infusion treatments become more difficult when someone needs to drive or find transportation one or two hours from home. Fatch wants to see the cancer center reopened.
When people have to travel for care, they encounter barriers such as economic, transportation or child or adult care, he says.
Another infusion service he hopes to open would provide Remicade for arthritis patients.
Taking the job as CEO on May 27 after wildfires threatened his home in Redding, Calif., Fatch says he and his wife are excited about living in such a “completely beautiful” region of the country and near their son in Ohio.
And the opportunity the Sharon Regional Health System has given him to help rebuild a closed hospital appealed to him.
“It doesn’t happen very often, right? Generally, they stay closed,” Fatch says. “And so, the reward of seeing all of these services come back online and then the patients not having to leave… Doing it locally – it’s just much better for the community.”
Growth and Progress
Fatch said the hospital was on track to have about 200 admissions in July and revenue is growing.
“We’re seeing 26% growth in revenue from June compared to April,” Fatch says. “Patient days and admissions are up. ER volume has been consistently above 50 a day. When I started here it was 30.”
The third and fourth floor are open, including the behavioral health units for adults, children and adolescents. The adult program is expanding from 14 beds to 20 with plans to go to 24 beds in the next few months.
Savitala says the importance of behavioral health, both inpatient and outpatient, is critical for the community.
The hospital is in the process of adding more primary care physicians. One internal medicine doctor is slated to start in mid-August.
In Hermitage, Sharon Regional Health System is offering the diagnostic center providing imaging services including mammography, ultrasound and bone density testing. While the MRI CT unit is offline, Fatch says there are plans to bring it back. Outpatient services in Hermitage also include corporate health services, which provides preemployment screenings and treats workers’ compensation injuries; sports medicine and a rehab center with physical, occupational and speech therapy.
In late July, the hospital was in the process of recruiting orthopedic surgeons. The hospital is seeking mid-level physicians, as well as employees for clinical and administrative positions.
When Sharon Regional Medical Center issued its closure notice it claimed about 700 employees would be affected. While some of those employees stayed in the area during the closure and were brought back, the hospital has also found new employees who made the move with the closure of Insight Hospital & Medical Center Trumbull in Warren and Insight Rehabilitation Hospital Hillside in Howland, in late March. Both were also casualties of the Steward bankruptcy.
While recruiting someone from outside the area to work in a rural hospital can be difficult, Fatch says there are tradeoffs wherever someone lives.
“We still have room to grow,” Savitala says. “We have a lot of open positions out there. It’s a tougher area to recruit to, being designated as rural. But the good news is that we’re in a hiring mode. That definitely beats the alternative.”
Additionally, with the loss of the Western Reserve Health Education residency program that operated through Trumbull Regional Medical Center, the local hospitals lost a manpower resource. The program, which shut down after the Steward bankruptcy, trained in internal medicine, surgery and other specialty areas, and also familiarized them with the Shenango and Mahoning Valley region and its hospitals.
“It would be nice to have that residency program here, in house here, because we also know from a population standpoint, it would be great to bring new families into the area,” Savitala says.
Savitala adds Sharon Regional Health System is working to help Western Reserve reopen the program. And the hospital is working with various schools in Pennsylvania, where up-and-coming doctors and nurses need experience so they can do rotations at the Sharon hospital.
“As soon as we heard that Trumbull shut down and they didn’t have a home to go to, we opened up our home to them so that they could have a place to rotate through,” Savitala says. “And then when [Western Reserve] accreditation fell through… we said we’ll work with you on getting a new program, whatever that looks like.”
Infrastructure Improvements
Medical Properties Trust remains the landlord for the hospital after Steward sold the hospital real estate for its 31 hospitals to MPT prior to the bankruptcy. Fatch says MPT is replacing the roof of the hospital, which is a “significant” and much-needed investment in the infrastructure.
“MPT has been a good partner in that regard,” Savitala says, noting at the completion of the project the hospital’s roof should last 20 years.
There are other projects to the building in the capital plan and Savitala says because Sharon Regional Health System is a nonprofit hospital, it is seeking grants to help with additional projects.
Using grant money from the state and matching grant funds from MPT, she says another project is underway to replace water pipes in the hospital, which had corroded. Savitala says it is a floor-by-floor process to fix those pipes, which is going to take time.
“You don’t want to touch too much, because you don’t want patient care to be impacted,” Savitala says. “You have to be methodical and responsible in how you do things.”
Additionally, Fatch says there are a lot of systems that are near the end of their life and need to be replaced.
For instance, among four elevators clustered in one area, three need service. Fatch notes there is constant use and wear on a building and property that is open 24-7.
“It is a worn footprint,” Savitala says. “We just have to go through the effort of beautification.”
She wants to see the parking lot improved and then there are other projects that would make the hospital better for the patients and the employees.
“Research has shown that if you have a garden for employees as well as patients, for well-being – just if you spend 20 minutes in that garden it’s rejuvenating,” Savitala says.
She notes employees in health care often internalize the trauma and struggles of their patients but a garden could have a positive impact.
Nonprofit Benefits
Fatch says the nonprofit aspect of Sharon Regional Health System was another thing that attracted him to the job.
“I just think that nonprofits are just a much better environment for me and the patients and the employees,” Fatch says, adding he likes that revenue is being reinvested into the equipment and the facility.
“I’m always the type of person that feels like we could always do more,” Savitala says. “So yes, I would like to see our volumes go up. I would like to see our cath lab fully reopened yesterday. But I understand that there’s a process. We are working closely with our staff, with the [Pennsylvania] Department of Health and appropriately staffing. So I do strongly believe that it is a much needed service in the area and as we continue to grow and to educate people that we are reopened and that we are stable and we’re here for the long run, because we are investing back into the community. I think that’s a very important message for people to understand that we fully intend for this hospital to be a long-term sustainable asset for the community.”
Fatch and Savitala also emphasize the importance of using local vendors whenever possible, unlike when Steward operated it and would go with a national vendor to do work or provide supplies for more than 30 hospitals.
“I feel like in the short time that we have been here, we have invested a lot back into the community, bringing back all these jobs and work for the local vendors,” Savitala says.
Pictured at top: Sharon Regional Health System is open for business.